


Quinn - Words That Are Mine

by EgoDominusTuus



Series: First Words [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, soulmate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 16:09:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5749600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EgoDominusTuus/pseuds/EgoDominusTuus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinn has always had words on his skin - words that bring him comfort when nothing else will. Those words are his, and he is damn well determined to keep them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quinn - Words That Are Mine

My father doesn’t have any words on his skin - at least, none that he’s ever told me about. He has a wicked scar across his chest, like he’s taken a knife and stripped away his flesh… but there aren’t any words.

  He’s certainly beaten me enough times over my own. Across the line of my hip are words that I cherish. They speak to me, even though no one else will.

   _Let’s get you fixed up._

I hold them dear to my heart, because those words truly seem to be the only thing the cares.

  The other words are in a line across my back, and I can’t help but to wonder at them. _What, haven’t seen a woman in army green before?_ And I can hear the half annoyed amusement in them. A woman though?

  Even at a young age, I don’t know why those words are there… because that doesn’t seem like anything _I’d_ be interested in. But those words bring a small comfort to me, because they’re mine, and they’ve always been there. They’ve had my back, and they’ve lasted through the bruises.

  ‘ _Let’s get you fixed up’_ is my sweet mantra. Every time my father lays a fist to my face, every time I go to school and have to explain the bruises and cuts… those words are there, and I can put my hand to my hip and feel them sitting on my skin. I don’t think too much about it, because the people that I meet never say those words.

 Though I played, I kissed, and I made the mistake of sneaking one home… I never let it go further, because their words are things like _Wow, your eyes are amazing._ Or _You look like you’ve been through hell._ It depended on if I’d been hit that day… but they were never **my** words.

  I kept myself for those words, because they meant that much to me. As the years passed though, I began to wonder if I was going to find them at all.

  No one cared enough to fix me up… and I was fairly certain that no lady in green was going to steal my heart.

  I told myself that it didn’t matter if I found the speakers, because the words were still _mine._ No one could take those away, and the sweet knowledge of that brought me peace. Still, a part of my heart ached for the verbal echo of the script that I’d stared at so often, until every time a sentence started with _Let’s get you_ or _What, haven’t seen_ my heart gave a tiny leap of hope.

  Somewhere inside, I always knew that the speaker was wrong though. They’d finish the sentence with _into my bed,_ or _someone as sexy as you_. I’d laugh and smile, wave them off, and tuck away the small, panged feeling in my chest that those words had escaped me again.

  At eighteen, I left the rundown house that I’d called my home and I joined up with the military. My father had expected it of me, and it was the only idea that James Francis and I had ever seen eye to eye on. I needed a family, something that I could call my own, and I knew that the military offered that sense of closeness. I wanted to _do_ something, to _help_ people. I wanted something different - and maybe, I wanted to get away from the little town where everyone had already spoken their first words to me.

  Straight off the bus, three days into training, and I was already getting into trouble. I could spot a bully from a mile away - and at least some of the scars on my knuckles were from fights that I’d been in. I could handle one well, I could even handle two, but when the third had come out and started wailing on me… I knew I was in a bit of trouble. Blood was a crimson slick across my lips, and my ribs ached.

  And then there was a strong voice, barking an order to stand at attention. I would have stood, if I could have caught my breath.

  But the boys holding me jerked up straight, their eyes full of malice and fear wrapped in a pretty package. The man’s command had drawn the attention of higher officers, and the three boys made a hasty retreat before more trouble than they’d intended rained down on their head.

  I didn’t care though - I think that trouble could have rained down on my head like a storm of anvils, because the man who had saved me was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He stepped forward, one strong arm coming beneath my shoulders to lift me up. He brushes some dust from my jacket and fixed me with heavenly blue eyes.

  “Thanks for the hand, sir.” My voice is a soft litany of awe, and I see his pupils contract for just a moment. Reflexively, he answers me.  
  “Let’s get you fixed up.”

   _Let’s get you fixed up._

It was the tone that I’d always imagined, soft, _slightly_ exasperated, affectionate. Those words were mine, and everything inside of me was on fire in sweet jubilation.

  I stared at the man in front of me, drinking in his features. Dark hair, crew cut. His mouth is all soft lips and a stern look. It’s his eyes that really do me in - though I have to say that a well-muscled frame half a head taller than me doesn’t hurt. Those eyes though - light blue, lighter than the sky, lighter than spring… sweet, chilled winter. Winter with a warmth, and a depth… and I could feel myself falling.

  The words across my hip burned, and I was helpless.

  It took months to get Silas King to admit his feelings for me - and only when those same bastards that caused us to speak to begin with try to ruin the world. I wasn’t angry about it, honestly. Carslile had tried to break me, but he’d brought me closer to Silas, instead. I let him trace the words on the shelf of my hip, and I’m all too happy to press my lips to his collarbone in return.

  It’s only after a time that we both, shyly, worriedly, showed each other that there are other words.

   _Captain?_ and _What, haven’t seen a woman in army green before?_ were written in the same graceful print - the words on his ankle twin to the ones on my back. For a time, we don’t worry about it. For a time, we just go on as though another voice isn’t out there calling to us.

  And then, I had to leave Silas - at least for a time. I was stationed, and he was pulling every string that he could grasp to get stationed in the same place as me.

  It was there, stationed and away from Silas for the first time that I met Private Fortune. It was there, seeing her beautiful smile and bright eyes that the words spilled from my lips.

  “Well, fuck. Now I’m confused.” I spoke the words without meaning to - but I’d never felt a small pull in my chest from a woman before. Her eyes flare wide, if only for a moment, and then she responds.

  “What, haven’t seen a woman in army green before?”

   My words. Those are _my_ words… and in that moment, I could feel my heart soar.

   Nora and I were inseparable after that - we watched out for each other in the way that Silas and I had watched one another (mostly Silas watching me) before… and I realized that there was a reason for the two lines on my body - sweet Private Nora Fortune had my back, no matter what.

  And I had hers.

  And I think that’s what made it even harder when Silas and I lost her.

  It was years down the road, after our service, when we’d all settled down. We lived side by side, so that Silas, Nora, and I could be together whenever we wished. I’d married her blonde cousin, Nora Quinn - and she’d given me a beautiful son. For a time, we’d thought everything was perfect - for a time, those words that were mine were all that I needed in the world.

  And then everything changed.

  We woke up cold, shivering, and I wanted to _scream_ . Even before looking, I could feel the burn on my shoulder where _my words_ should have been, and Silas stared at his ankle, at the scar on his skin, with pain in his gaze.

  It was only later, as we made camp at Sanctuary Hills, in our old home that we noticed something new. When clothes came off so that the comfort of skin to skin could ease away some of our frigid ache from our loss, we noticed the words. Two separate lines - two different styles of handwriting. Exact matches for both of us - the same in every way.

   The first, messy scrawl, looping from ribs to spine.

   _We appreciate the assistance, civilians, but what's your business here?_

The second, curling words, mine on the left and Silas’ on the right upper bicep.

   _I could have handled that myself._

My heart thudded hard in my chest, because I knew… those words were _ours_. And somewhere out there, in the devastated world that we’d woken into, Silas and I would find them.


End file.
